Wired 03.12

Who said tweets and status updates had killed the blog? As I
write this, a site called Tumblr is hosting 40 million blogs, made
up of 15 billion posts, and with 25,000 new users a day. It's also
being valued at £500 million, having attracted funding from the
likes of Union Square Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners
and Richard Branson. Not bad for a business run by a 25-year-old
that simply aspires to be "the perfect platform for
self-expression". Continue »

Before the iPod, MP3 players were ugly and difficult to use. Until now, thermostats had the same issues, but a former lead engineer at Apple and one of the iPod’s creators have designed a “learning” thermostat, the Nest »

The web is a risky space to transact. Anyone who’s ever written a business pitch for a reputation-driven service has had to face the fact that our global, online consensual hallucination relies on the archive of our virtual activity »